The 2010 biopic Van Gogh: Painted with Words, another BBC production, offered Cumberbatch the opportunity to tackle the iconically troubled Dutch painter, not to mention to grow a beard and go ginger for the role.

BBC’s series Sherlock, starring Cumberbatch in the titular role with Martin Freeman as Watson, earned the former a Golden Globe nomination and marks the moment when his career started to gain traction. Rumors of a fourth season abound.

In the 2011 Danny Boyle–directed stage adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller each played the infamous Dr. Frankenstein and his terrifying Creature on alternating nights at the Royal National Theatre, both to rave reviews.

Matt Groening didn’t miss the opportunity to capitalize on Cumberbatch’s spot-on impersonation of fellow British actor Alan Rickman in a February 2013 episode of The Simpsons that featured a cameo from Professor Severus Snape.

Alongside an ensemble cast that included Zachary Quinto and Zoë Saldana in J.J. Abrams’s second Star Trek installment, Cumberbatch made his U.S. debut playing the pale-faced, raven-haired Khan, a genetically enhanced superhuman out to destroy Starfleet.

Having been in correspondence with Assange, Cumberbatch all but embodies the WikiLeaks founder’s zealous ambition in The Fifth Estate. (Assange severed all ties with Cumberbatch after discovering aspects of the film not to his liking—his loss.)

This December, Cumberbatch will give life to Smaug, the avaricious dragon in the second installation of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy. Farther afield, Cumberbatch will voice an inevitably cuter animal (who is also a CIA agent!) in the spin-off of Madagascar.

By now, it’s little secret that the American film industry has been entranced by Benedict Cumberbatch, the Harrow-educated prince of an actor who wields blue-green daggers for eyes, a funny-sounding English name (famously difficult to pronounce for David Letterman), and at least nine films currently in pre- or post-production. Astute audiences have been following him since early roles in Atonement and The Other Boleyn Girl, but Cumberbatch’s turn as the vengeful Khan in last summer’s Star Trek Into Darkness was arguably the first to garner him any wide recognition this side of the Atlantic. The Fifth Estate and 12 Years a Slave—both likely Oscar contenders, both in theaters today, and both starring Cumberbatch—will do nothing to slow his Hollywood conquest.

Even a quick survey of Cumberbatch’s CV shows his extraordinary range—see our slideshow for proof—but these days it seems that his rumbling baritone might be even more in-demand than his transformative capabilities as an actor. So as we prepare to hear Cumberbatch in major franchise films like The Hobbit trilogy and a Madagascar spin-off, we’re forced to ask: What’s in a name? For the man called Benedict, apparently quite a lot.